


Conviction

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 08:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severin Hawke remembers the impassioned viscount's son through his own words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conviction

What struck Severin was his eyes.

He’d fixed Severin with such a look — direct, self-aware, full of conviction — that even Varric had commented on it.  
“First time someone’s looked you dead in the eyes since… pfft.”

The viscount described his son to Severin as rebellious, careless, impulsive. The Saemus Dumar that Sev ushered back to Hightown exuded none of these traits.

_“I’ve never had a friend in Kirkwall. I don’t think anyone here knows what the word ‘friend’ means.  
I think you do, Messere Hawke. And that's why you're lonely."_

Viscount Dumar berated his son in a quiet but strained voice, pacing the velvet-soft floor of his office, and not once did he look the lad in the eyes.  
But Severin knew little of father-son relations, and kept quiet, and bowed out.

_“He is a good man. I know he is, I’ve never thought otherwise. But he is clouded. I wish to make him see… but no one can open another’s eyes.”_

Severin moved to Hightown, settled in, gazed out at Kirkwall from a new vantage point. When he did see Saemus, the lad — but he was not a lad now, no — appeared thoughtful, reserved, controlled. Contemplating.  
The viscount was often busy, tensions bubbling over at the docks and in the Templar Hall, his time valuable and his patience thin.  
But Saemus didn’t bug him. Not once.

_“Everyone has a purpose. Everyone and everything. The Chantry in particular has a very important purpose. I just… don’t think they realise what it actually is.  
Or how it will be fulfilled.”_

Anders was unnerved by Saemus, by the clearness in the depths of his eyes, by the sharpness in his gaze.  
Saemus _knows_ , and though Anders is not yet aware of what this knowledge entails, he is unnerved.  
“Let the Arishok have him, and sod it all. He wants it, after all.”

Severin could not be all things to all people — _a friend to mages was an enemy to templars, a friend to the viscount would be an enemy to Qunari…_ — he was beginning to learn that, and he wished for Saemus’ conviction.  
He wished to wander the Wounded Coast and meet his fate.

_“You do not have to choose a side. You merely have to choose. What matters to you? Nothing else matters beyond that. It’s quite simple, really.  
Anders is your friend, yes? If something would harm Anders, then you cannot abide it. No matter what it is. Politics are transient. Bonds between people are not.”_

Severin drags when he goes before the Arishok on the viscount’s behalf; there is a pit in his chest and a permanent furrow in his brow that ages him ever so slightly.  
The perils of being everything to everyone is that no one gives him time to mourn his own flesh and blood.

When he is sent away with mysterious news, sent to the Chantry, the knot in his stomach eclipses the pit in his chest.

_“Ashaad would have appreciated you, Messere. You listen. You listen, and don’t try to prove everything wrong. So many people are taken with the sounds of their own voices and their own diatribe, their warped convictions, their clouded faith…”_

When he crouches behind Saemus’ kneeling form, only to have the lad collapse still and silent and breathless, the knot twists, digs in deep, and leaves a scar.

Petrice bled out on the floor below whilst Dumar sobbed, and Severin gathered the words he couldn’t erase and departed — whisper-quiet, a mere shadow. His companions followed suit, whisper-quiet, mere shadows. A funeral procession.

_“If I am lost to the Maker for refusing to hate someone, for finding beauty in the ‘other’…”_

“Then the Maker does not deserve you,” Severin murmured, the Chantry doors whisper-quiet as they closed behind him, the velvet cover of night unable to eclipse the shadow over his soul.


End file.
